Firm partners with mum network to break new ground

by
Samantha Woodhill |
05 Oct 2016

Online legal marketplace Crowd & Co is the latest legal business to partner with ProfessionalMums.net, capitalising on the many female lawyers looking to dip a toe in the legal job market after time out of the workforce.

“We’re about a solution for those women who have left the profession and are looking to get back in but find it hard to get back in in a traditional way,” ProfessionalMums.net CEO Kate Mills told Australasian Lawyer.

“If you’ve taken more than a two-year break from the workforce, it can be very hard to get back in through traditional methods.”

ProfessionalMums is a platform for skilled women looking to return to the workforce, or simply seeking a more flexible working opportunity.

There are many barriers for women re-entering the workforce. Confidence is one of them, though often the perception of a drastically different workplace is larger than the reality, Mills said. And while there are many gap-bridging strategies, sourcing contract work can be an extremely useful way.

“That’s often the way that women come back into the workforce, they do a little bit of work and they do it well,” Mills said.

“The nice thing about contract work is that it often gives both sides a chance to ‘try before you buy’.”

As a legal business attracting contract work in particular, Crowd & Co is an ideal fit for a ProfessionalMums partnership. Speaking with Australasian Lawyer, Crowd & Co CEO Jarred Hardman said the partnership is a ‘win-win’ for clients and lawyers in the network.

“We’re not just a business what we want to do is actually be part of the legal community and support the other organisations that are trying to do something a bit different,” Hardman said.

“We’re currently negotiating and discussing with a number of different associations about partnerships in the legal space.”